Selection strategies to ensure that members of underserved communities can pursue medical careers can be effective in achieving a fair and equitable representation of underserved communities within the student body. Such strategies may contribute to a diverse medical student body with strong intentions to work with underserved populations.
This literature review describes the impact of health professional schools with a social accountability mandate by identifying characteristics of medical education found to impact positively on medical students, health workforce, and health outcomes of disadvantaged communities. A critical appraisal tool was used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the published articles. Data are presented as a narrative synthesis due to the variety of methodologies in the studies, and characterized using a logic model. Health professional schools aiming to improve health outcomes for their disadvantaged local communities described collaborative partnerships with communities, equitable selection criteria, and community-engaged placements in underserved areas as positively impacting the learning and attitudes of students. Students of socially accountable schools were more likely to stay in rural areas and serve disadvantaged communities, and were often more skilled than students from more traditional schools to meet the needs of underserved communities. However, published literature on the impact of socially accountable health professional education on communities and health outcomes is limited, with only one study investigating health outcomes. The findings of this literature review guide schools on the inputs likely to maximize their socially accountability outputs and increase their impact on students, local health workforce and local communities.
This study examined the hypothesis that a medical school in a low-resource setting, based on volunteer faculty, can be sustainable and associated with improvement in medical workforce and population health outcomes. Methods: Using a retrospective case study approach, this study described the formation of the Ateneo de Zamboanga University School of Medicine (ADZU SOM) in Zamboanga province, Mindanao, Philippines. The principal outcome measures were the number of graduated students practicing as physicians in the Philippines, the number of local municipalities with doctors, and changes in the provincial infant mortality rate since the School's inception. Results: Since the first 15 graduates in 1999, by 2011 more than 160 students had successfully graduated with over 80% practicing in the local underserved regions. This compares with a national average of 68% of Philippine medical graduates practicing overseas. There has been a 55% increase (n=20 to 31) in the number of municipalities in Zamboanga with a doctor. Since the ADZU SOM's inception in 1994, the infant mortality rate in the region has decreased by approximately 90%, compared with a national change of approximately 50% in the same time period. The School has only three employees because all teachers continue to work as volunteer clinicians from the local health services.
Developing and retaining a high-quality medical workforce in low-resource countries is a worldwide challenge. The Filipino Ateneo de Zamboanga University-School of Medicine (ADZU-SOM) has adopted a strong focus on socially accountable health professional education (SAHPE) in order to address the shortage of physicians across rural and urban communities in the Western Mindanao region. A cross-sectional survey of graduates from two Philippines medical schools: ADZU-SOM in the Mindanao region and a medical school with a more conventional curriculum, found ADZU-SOM graduates were more likely to have joined the medical profession due to a desire to help others (p = 0.002), came from lower socioeconomic strata (p = 0.001) and had significantly (p < 0.05) more positive attitudes to community service. ADZU graduates were also more likely to currently work in Government Rural Health Units (p < 0.001) or be generalist Medical Officers (p < 0.001) or Rural/Municipal Health Officers (p = 0.003). ADZU graduates were also less likely to work in private or specialist Government hospitals (p = 0.033 and p = 0.040, respectively) and be surgical or medical specialists (p = 0.010 and p < 0.001, respectively). The findings suggest ADZU-SOM's SAHPE philosophy manifests in the practice choices of its graduates and that the ADZU-SOM can meet the rural and urban health workforce needs of the Western Mindanao region.
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